Subject: Re: MD5 in LISP and abstraction inversions
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net>
Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2001 22:59:52 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3214335588766680@naggum.net>

* John Foderaro
| However suppose you were given the power today to tell me that I can no
| longer use if*.  Would you tell me that?

  For external, published code, in order to keep the community stability,
  all of us rid our code and even our prose, of personal idiosyncrasies.
  Publishing houses and their copy editors exist primiarily to get rid of
  the "personal dialects" of its staff of authors, and series editors of
  technical books make sure that all authors agree on the terminology.  We
  have a large number of other examples of how people have to extinguish
  their pet peeves in order for the community to work better.  To reject
  _all_ of the consensus-forming procedures in a community is hostile to
  every single memer of that community, because every one of us has already
  made, and will continue to make, sacrifices in order to further the goal
  of a coherent community.  It has been obvious for a very long time that
  you have no such goal, and would rather sacrifice the community coherence
  to your ability to "use" (read "publish"; nobody cares about unpublished
  code) your macro.  Other people have used other forms predating Common
  Lisp, too, but they do in fact not publish hostile documents that tell
  people _not_ to use the standard.

| I know of one militant Common Lisp fundamentalist who's been terrorizing
| non believers here for years who would love to be able to force his will
| on others in the name of the community.

  You are quite alone in this psychotic delusion which only further your
  own insane rage.  You have created a deamon that keeps haunting you, but
  it is not real.  _Nobody_ wants what you think they want.  You are the
  kind of person who believes in dictating what is _right_, and that is
  actually quite amazingly stupid of you.  Most other thinking people know
  that anyone who has even looked the philosophy of law in western cultures
  would argue for dictating what is _wrong_, given solid grounds and good
  evidence.  That you cannot distinguish one from the other only paints you
  as rather stupid and ignorant and arrogant.  Which is why you get most of
  the reactions you get here.

| You can say "Thou shalt not write control flow macros that duplicate
| what's in Common Lisp" and claim that if* is immoral and at the same time
| say that when and unless are perfectly find macros and in fact divinely
| inspired.

  Can you _please_ get it into your stale mind that nobody argues what you
  keep saying they do?  Last time we had this annoying round, you kept
  making a large number of completely bogus claims about what other people
  had said, and you simply cannot quit living in your psychotic delusion of
  a make-believe world.

  What is being said is actually this: "Please quit denouncing the standard
  and people who happen to like it and want it simply because you think you
  are the singularly most brilliant genius on the face of this planet past,
  present and future who came up with the if* macro."

  The fact that your macro is not being adopted _should_ have told you
  something.  The fact that lots of people denounce it, quite independently
  despite your paranoid delusions that there is a conspiracy against you,
  does not register with you.  You do not get your will, and therefore you
  fight people with _amazingly_ dirty tactics.  This does _not_ win you
  friends, nor does it influence people to adopt if* -- which has become a
  symbol of irrational, arrogant stubbornness _only_ because of your lack
  of ability to back down and consider other people's opinions.  One _has_
  to wonder what kind of personality problem has caused this, when you make
  a very strong point of arguing that people should voice their objections
  when they do not like what is posted to this newsgroup -- obviously, if
  anyone happens not to "agree" with you in their objections, they must be
  shot down -- by you.  This lack of insight into your own behavior is not
  rational.  In fact, it is _so_ irrational that any hope of you _ever_
  getting the picture and starting to figure out that you would benefit a
  lot by not _publishing_ code with that annoyingly stupid if* sunt is nil.

| Or just maybe we should once again step back from the brink of
| registering Common Lisp as a religion.

  The _only_ religion here is called "if*".  People object to your stupid
  accusations of a religion in ways that cause your bigoted mind to think
  they are guilty _because_ they object.  That people object to some insane
  accusation does not make the accuser any more right, but an insane
  accuser will not notice this, because he has already made up his mind.

| It's a programming language folks!!  It's a tool to get a job done.

  Then why the hell do you have such a problem writing standard Common Lisp?
  Your _entire_ chain or agumentation falls flat on its face when you make
  this argument.

| Lisp can and must absorb new ideas from other languages to maintain its
| leadership position (even if these new ideas end up being control flow
| macros that duplicate existing common lisp ones).  Also no person on this
| newsgroup speaks for the community.  Don't be bullied into believing
| otherwise.

  Geez, did those objections to you believing you are the censor of this
  newsgroup not even _register_ with you?  _You_ are the bully here, John
  Foderaro, trying to make people _not_ use the standard, trying to force
  people to shut up.  Go away and create comp.lang.lisp.foderaro, where you
  _are_ the supreme genius and censor and everything else you seem to be
  really pissed that you are in fact _not_ in this newsgroup.

  The moment you understand that you are a worse bully than anyone else
  here and far more destructive to the community than anyone else, there
  might a chance you achieve enlightenment.  The world will know that this
  has happened when you publish code without the stupid if* conditional.

///
-- 
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